Before the Yuki Matsuri

Yesterday I went to Sapporo and while I was there walked past Odori Park, one of the venues of the world famous Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival) which will be held next week. The park is closed off as the ski slope and giant sculptures are being built.  The park is about eight or ten blocks long and it is interesting to see what was happening a week before the festival begins.  These photos were taken from across the street in the midst of falling snow, so they aren’t the best. If you are interested in seeing what the giant blocks of snow behind the scaffolding might turn out to look like, take a look at this post from last year’s festival.

 

The big fabric/craft store, Kanariya, is a block off of Odori Park, so I stopped in there.  If they didn’t have signs warning a person not to take photographs in the store, I would love to be able to show you it all. I do understand the STOP NOT ALLOWED kanji, so I didn’t take any pictures in the store.  I went in looking for some specific beads and SoNo beading thread but found neither.   I saw quite a few things that looked interesting, but living in a small apartment makes one think twice about stash enhancement.

The train ride is about an hour each way, so I always have a stitching project with me.  This is what I brought along on yesterday’s ride to work on.

 

It’s called Huck Weaving or Swedish Embroidery and these two little dish towels are my first attempt at this technique. The thread, towels, and a page of instruction were a clearance packet from the Nordic Needle and I think a nice introduction.  It’s a good train project, requiring neither great concentration nor vision. If you aren’t already familiar with huck weaving, you might be interested in knowing the needle doesn’t pierce the fabric. The thread goes under “floats” on top, so no thread is seen on the back.  I may not be able to wait until my next train trip to work on these.  I’ll post pictures when I finish them.